Thoreau calls and reports about the reading of his lecture
on Brown at Boston and Worcester. Thoreau has good right to speak fully his
mind concerning Brown, and has been the first to speak and celebrate the hero's
courage and magnanimity. It is these which ho discerns and praises. The men
have much in common, — the sturdy manliness, straightforwardness, and
independence. It is well they met, and that Thoreau saw what he sets forth as
none else can. Both are sons of Anak and dwellers in Nature, — Brown taking
more to the human side, and driving straight at institutions, while Thoreau
contents himself with railing at and letting them otherwise alone. He is the
proper panegyrist of the virtues he owns himself so largely, and so comprehends
in another.
SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of
John Brown, p. 506
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